ABOUT THIS BOOK
The last man she ever wanted to see…
Evie Baker’s luck just ran out. Thanks to an ex-partner with organized crime ties, she’s lost her restaurant, her money, and nearly all her self-respect. Forced to return to her hometown and work as a shampoo girl in her mother’s salon, she doesn’t think her luck can get any worse.
But then someone starts shooting at her, her sullen baby sister is suddenly missing, and the high school heartthrob who stole her heart—and her virginity—is the only man big enough and bad enough to help.
Might be the only one who can save her…
Captain Matt “Richie Rich” Girard can’t afford to get involved. He’s already on the verge of a court-martial after a Top Secret op gone wrong, and he’s been ordered to stay out of trouble while he’s home for his sister’s wedding.
But when Evie’s ex-partner turns up dead, staying out of trouble is the last thing on Matt’s mind. He failed Evie once before; he can’t fail her again. If he’s going to protect her from a killer, and find her sister before time runs out, he’ll have to risk his entire future—and both their lives—to do it.
Things are about to get HOT in the bayou!
COPYRIGHT
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2013 by Lynn Raye Harris.
Cover Design Copyright 2013 Croco Designs.
Digital Formatting by Author E.M.S.
ISBN: 9780989451208
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All Rights Reserved.
Table of Contents
About This Book
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Join My Newsletter
Thank You
Other Books by Lynn
About the Author
Acknowledgements
What’s Next
DEDICATION
For my handsome military husband, who always believed in this story.
PROLOGUE
Two months ago…
SOMETHING WAS WRONG.
It wasn’t anything obvious, but Captain Matthew Girard felt it in his gut nonetheless. It was an itching sensation across his skin, a buzzing in his belly. Perhaps it was simply the weight of this mission pressing down on him. Though the Hostile Operations Team always performed critical missions, this one was even more so. Failure was not an option.
Beside him, Kevin MacDonald lay in the sand, his camouflage-clad form as still as marble until the moment he turned his head and caught Matt’s eye.
Kev’s hand moved. Doesn’t feel right, he signaled.
No, Matt signaled back. Count on Kev to pick up on it too. They’d been on a shitload of ops together. Matt knew that if his second-in-command was picking up on this weird vibe, it wasn’t just him. Yet the mission was too important to scrub without more than just a gut feeling to go on.
“It’s awful quiet in that compound.” Jim Matuzaki’s voice came through the earpiece a few moments later.
“Yeah,” Matt answered into the mic attached to his helmet. Almost as if the tangos inside knew that a HOT squad was coming and had abandoned the compound.
The stone structure thirty meters away rose two stories high and lacked windows. The roof was flat to enable gunmen to look out on the surrounding territory and defend the building.
But there were no gunmen. Not tonight.
In the surveillance photos, the gunmen were so plentiful they’d stood out against the pale roof like a porcupine’s quills. And now…
Nothing.
Though it was quiet here, gunfire exploded in the distance at regular intervals. A pitched battle between a pocket of enemy forces and a Ranger battalion raged a few miles away. HOT’s mission was quieter, but no less deadly.
They were here for Jassar ibn-Rashad, heir to Freedom Force leader Al Ahmad. But this mission was different. Usually, they killed the target. Tonight, they were extracting him. The rumored new Freedom Force mastermind was wanted higher up in the chain, and Matt didn’t question orders from the Pentagon. They wanted him, they were getting him.
Matt and his team had planned the mission to kidnap ibn-Rashad for weeks. Down to the last damn detail. And then they’d gotten word just a few days ago that ibn-Rashad was moving to this location.
The intel was good. Damn good. And their contact had been reliable on more than one occasion.
But this time?
The bad feeling in Matt’s gut was getting stronger by the second. He’d thought the kid seemed more nervous than usual the last time he’d gone to meet with him. The kid had always been nervous, but he’d seemed to trust Matt’s word. And Matt had trusted him as much as he was able. Trust, but verify.
Which the CIA had done. All the chatter indicated that ibn-Rashad had moved to this location. Nothing indicated that the Freedom Force had any idea they were being targeted. And in spite of the niggling feeling he’d had about the whole thing, Matt had chosen to press forward with the op.
Just then, a light flashed up on the roof and blinked out again. Male voices carried in the night, followed by a bark of laughter.
“Two men,” Marco San Ramos said over the headset. “Smoking.”
Marco and Jim were closer and had a better view through the glasses.
“Richie?” Jim’s voice came through the headset again, calling Matt by his team name.
He knew what the other man was asking. What they were all waiting for. In another location close by, Billy Blake, Jack Hunter, Chase Daniels, and Ryan Gordon also waited for the signal to go or to retreat. The timeline was tight, and if they didn’t go in now, they’d have to scrub the mission. They had precisely twenty minutes to infiltrate the compound, kill the tangos, and extract ibn-Rashad.
If they were going in.
“Mission is a go.” Matt made the split-second decision in spite of the acid roiling in his belly. What if they didn’t get a second chance at this? Lives hung in the balance with ibn-Rashad remaining free. This mission had always been risky, but what did they ever do that wasn’t?
Failing was simply not a part of his genetic makeup. Maybe he got it from the old man—that combination of stubbornness, meanness, and sheer cockiness that wouldn’t let him back down unless there was no other option. He wasn’t stupid, but he wasn’t a quitter either. And people’s lives hung in the balance.
People he could save. He’d made a promise, long ago, and he’d kept it. He was still keeping it.
“Repeat,” Matt said, his jaw tight, “mission is a go.”
“Copy,” Jim replied. The rest of the men chimed in. Seconds later, two cracks rang in the night. And then Billy’s voice came over the headset. “Targets on roof neutralized.”
Matt let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Jack “Hawk” Hunter could always be counted on to make the difficult shots. The dude was probably the best sharpshooter Matt had ever seen. Thank God.
Everything went like clockwork from that point on. They converged on the compound from their separa
te locations. Kev set a charge on the door and then it exploded inward. Billy tossed a flash-bang into the opening. It went off with a loud crack, the light flaring for a split second as bright as a nuclear flash. Whoever was in that room would be temporarily blind and disoriented after that baby went off.
The team rushed through the door, going right and left in succession, guns drawn, as pandemonium reigned inside. HOT worked like a well-oiled machine. Each man knew instinctively where to shoot, could have done so blindfolded.
Within seconds, the terrorists lay dead and the scent of spent gunpowder hung heavy in the air, along with the odors of smoke and stale sweat.
Sweat also trickled down the inside of Matt’s assault suit. He didn’t have time to be uncomfortable. Instead, he and Kev raced up the steps along with Marco and Jim, searching for ibn-Rashad, while the other guys secured the perimeter.
A methodical sweep of the rooms proved futile.
“He’s not here,” Marco spat. “There’s no one else.”
“Goddamn.” The skin-crawling sensation Matt had had from the beginning of this op was now a full-blown assault on his senses. Kev looked at him, his face bleak behind the greasepaint, his eyes saying everything Matt was thinking.
Jassar ibn-Rashad was supposed to be here. He’d been reported here as of this afternoon, in fact. There was a price on the man’s head and no reason to move from this location… unless he’d been tipped off they were coming.
Sonofabitch. Matt suddenly felt like he was standing in a lightning storm, holding a steel rod in the air. He wasn’t necessarily going to be struck down, but the possibility was damn good.
“Do another sweep for intel. West side. Three minutes, and we’re out,” Matt ordered.
“Copy,” Marco said. He and Jim headed for the west side of the house while Matt and Kev split up to cover the rooms at the east end. Matt swept into each room, weapon drawn, helmet light blazing. There was nothing. No papers, no computers, no media of any kind. Nothing they could use to determine what ibn-Rashad was planning next.
He hit the hall again and met up with Kev, who shook his head.
Jim and Marco arrived next, empty-handed. The four of them pounded down the stairs. Another quick sweep of the rooms on the ground floor, and they were back into the night with the rest of the team, running for the extraction point five miles away.
They hadn’t gone a mile when bullets blasted into the air beside them. A hot, stinging sensation bloomed in Matt’s side. He kept running anyway. Until they crested the dune they’d been traveling up and came face-to-face with a series of rocket-propelled grenade launchers pointed right at them.
CHAPTER ONE
Rochambeau, Louisiana
Present day
“MM-MM, LOOK AT THAT GIRARD BOY, all grown up and better looking than a man ought to be,” said one of the ladies under the row of hairdryers.
Evie Baker’s heart did a somersault. Matt Girard. Dear God. “Careful,” Stella Dupre yelped as warm water sprayed against the side of the sink and hit her in the face.
“Sorry.” Evie shifted the hose.
She was a chef, not a shampoo girl, but she didn’t suppose that distinction mattered anymore since the bank now owned her restaurant. Shampoo girl in her mama’s beauty salon was just about the only job she could get at the moment, in spite of the resumes she’d blasted to every culinary school contact she could think of. The economy was bad and no one was hiring—and she didn’t have the luxury of waiting for something else to come along.
She didn’t think her skills would rust anytime soon, but it hurt not to be cooking right now. She should be playing with recipes, tweaking the flavors, and experimenting with new combinations. Instead, she was rinsing hair for a host of Stella Dupres—and doing it badly, apparently.
Mama glanced over at her, frowning even as the snip-snip of scissors continued unabated. The ladies in the salon swung to look out the picture window as Matt strode along, and the chatter ratcheted up a notch. The odor of perming solution and floral shampoo surrounded Evie like a wet blanket, squeezing her lungs. Her breath stuttered in her chest.
Matt Girard. She hadn’t seen him in ten years. Not since that night when he’d taken her virginity and broken her heart all at once. She’d known he was back in town—hell, the whole town had talked of nothing else since his arrival yesterday. She’d even known this moment was inevitable, except that she’d been doing her best to avoid all the places he might be for as long as possible.
They’d had an easy relationship, once. The kind where he could tug her ponytail, drop a frog in her shirt, or tease her endlessly about her buckteeth—which, thank God, she no longer had. But that had been when they were kids. Then she’d gotten breasts and started blushing whenever he looked her way, and things had changed. Or at least they had for her.
Matt, however, had been determined not to see her as anything other than little Evie Baker, the tomboy he used to play with when her mama went out to Reynier’s Retreat every week to fix his sick mother’s hair. He’d apparently persisted in that belief until the night she’d asked him, after a single shot of whiskey to give her courage, to be her first.
She’d had so many stupid dreams, and he’d crushed them all. But not before he gave her what she’d asked him for.
“Heard he got shot out there in Iraq,” Mrs. Martin said as Evie’s mama rolled a lock of gray hair around a fat pink curler.
“Yes indeed, got a Purple Heart,” Mama said. “The senator was right proud, according to Lucy Greene.”
“That’s not what I heard!” Joely Hinch crowed. “Miss Mildred told me he’s being kicked out of the Army because he didn’t obey orders.”
“Fiddlesticks,” Mrs. Martin said. “That boy bleeds red, white, and blue. Same as his daddy and every last Girard that ever was born up in that big house.”
Joely crossed her arms, looking slightly irritated to be contradicted. “You just wait and see,” she said smugly.
“Shush up, y’all,” Mama said. “I think he’s coming in.”
Evie’s heart sank to her toes. She wasn’t ready for this. Not on top of everything else. She was feeling so bruised and battered after her failure with the restaurant. She did not need Matt Girard swaggering back into her life and making her feel all the chaotic emotions she’d once felt for him.
She finished Stella’s shampoo and wrapped her hair in a towel. “I’m not tipping you, Evangeline.” Stella sniffed. “You have to be more careful than that.”
“I know. And I don’t blame you at all.” Except, of course, she desperately needed every penny she could get if she hoped to escape this town again. It wasn’t that Rochambeau was bad—it’s that it was bad for her. Always had been.
Here, she always felt like the awkward kid who lived in a tiny cottage with her mama and wore secondhand clothes because that’s all they could afford. Didn’t matter that the clothes were no longer secondhand, or that she wasn’t a kid anymore. Or that she didn’t care if the girls who lived in the nice big houses with the manicured lawns didn’t like her; she still felt like that girl who wanted so desperately to fit in.
And the biggest part of fitting in had, at one time, relied on the man striding toward her mama’s salon like he didn’t have a care in the world. Evie’s heart did a somersault as he reached the door.
Magazines snapped open in a flurry as the ladies tried to appear casually disinterested in the six-foot-two hunk of muscle about to open the glass door. More than one pair of eyes peeked over the tops of glossy pages as he stepped up to the sidewalk from the street.
No way in hell was she sticking around for this. It wouldn’t take these ladies more than a few moments to remember the scandalous rumors about her and Matt, and she didn’t want to be here when they did.
“If you’ll excuse me, I have to get some things out of the back.” Without waiting for a reply, she strode toward the stockroom. Rachel Mayhew, Mama’s regular shampoo girl, looked up and smiled as she passed. Rachel was onl
y twenty, so she probably didn’t know about Evie’s disastrous night with Matt. Or maybe she did, considering the way this town talked.
What should have been Evie’s own private shame had all too quickly become common knowledge back then. Part of that was her own fault, and part was Matt’s—but she still wasn’t sticking around to endure the sidelong glances and whispered conversations.
Life had beaten her up enough recently and she wasn’t in the mood to feel like a wounded teenager today.
A month ago, she’d said goodbye to her dream. It still hurt. Her lovely little bistro in Florida was now in the bank’s hands, and all because she’d trusted a man. Or mostly because she’d trusted a man.
Her restaurant, Evangeline’s, hadn’t exactly been doing a booming business, but things had been getting better and growth had been steady. It had, for a time, flourished under David’s management, which was how she’d grown to trust his insistence that he knew what he was doing and that she should spend her time perfecting her recipes instead of worrying over the mundane details.
David was cocky, charming, and utterly confident. She’d found that intriguing. One thing had led to another, and they’d ended up sharing a bed from time to time. She’d liked David, thought they were on the same page. He was an accountant who loved to cook, who knew a lot about social media and advertising, and who increased her profits by a few simple—or so he’d said—marketing tricks.
All of it lies. He’d increased her profits, yes. But then he’d robbed her blind. She’d seen the books on a regular basis and never known anything was out of whack. He hadn’t meant her to know, of course, but it still bugged her that she hadn’t seen through David’s schemes.
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